I consider myself a long time veteran when it comes to supporting virtual desktop solutions. Supporting these solutions at times can be a bear, and the giants of the world seem to be in acquisition mode to fill the potholes of their portfolio. I believe that virtual desktop computing has matured, and the solutions that are offered today are definitely more robust then VDI’s first inception. However, I wouldn’t say that these offerings have reduced in complexity. The problem with acquiring multiple companies to help offer a well rounded offering that addresses requirements around desktops, applications, user data, profiles, etc. is that the integration takes months, even years to fully mature and iron out all the bugs that will occur as a result of that integration.

So with that said, what if there was a different way of addressing virtual desktop computing? What if we can shift to a place where desktop admins can actually support a virtual desktop environment? What if they don’t have to understand technologies such as brokering, PXE boot, gateway servers, demilitarized zones, cloning, etc? What if they could use the tools they have in place today and not have to worry about persistence or non-persistence data? More importantly what if they didn’t have to worry about a separate management cluster and the overhead associated with this compute? I often find myself in predicaments when trying to sell the use case of virtual desktop computing because the customer has no idea who will actually support the solution. Is it infrastructure team? The desktop team? I’ve spoken to IT teams that absolutely despise desktop computing and want no part of it. Can you rely solely on the desktop team to support this type of solution?

Trace3 has recently been in discussions with a company called Workspot, whom I feel can make a significant impact in the virtual desktop space. The two founders of the company have experience in actually creating VDI 1.0 and decided to deliver on a promise that VDI 2.0 (Workspot) will deliver in value within hours not months! They can truly deliver on simple, while leveraging assets in the cloud, and simplifying the delivery model to all types of users (on premise, remote, etc.). But how you ask? Workspot provides a cloud centric model while leveraging a cloud connector to utilize on-premise resources for virtual desktops. The remove the necessary components, such as brokers, gateway servers, profiles, application delivery, etc. They have integration with Microsoft RDS for application centric deployments as well as provide a web portal/storefront that allows users to choose between applications or a full desktop. Persistence here is key. They plan on leveraging the technology and compute platform of Nutanix running on their latest version of KVM hypervisor. So through the power of open source and being cloud centric your VDI solution can be truly about delivering an experience simpler to manage, flexible enough to handle all types of workloads/users, reduced CAPEX and overhead associated with typical bolt-on technologies.

I feel the partnership of Workspot and Nutanix have a compelling offering that will change the way we deliver on VDI. I’m excited to see what’s to come and will have more on this solution in the coming months. More information can be found here – http://workspot.com/vdi20/